Elaborating on option trading, investment, market and the team.
On December 7th 2022 at midday UTC, we had a joint AMA with our partner, Uplift DAO, who Incubate, Launch & Accelerate the Crypto, DeFi, Web3, GameFi, NFT, & DEX Projects was held on A twitter Space. The team answered questions covering various topics related to chances of investing in VolareFinance, option trading, etc. If you missed the event here are some of the highlights from the discussion for reference purposes.
Q1:
Options trading as we know it allows investors the opportunity to
profit in all market conditions and it makes sense that in the rise of
interest in deeply as a whole, the interest in option trading has also
grown and we're joined here by May. she's gonna give us a bit more of a
background on VolareFinance and a bit about herself as well. May, Do you
wanna tell us a bit about yourself?
May: Sure. Hey everyone this is May from VolareFinance. I joined Crypto since 2017 and then before that I used to work in finance industry in New York. And about leverage finance, it's actually create a perfect solution for trading options in crypto based on my opinion and pretty much we provide the transparent plus and convenient decentralized. Mechanism that runs without intermediate. Option tradings, yeah.
Q2:
Amazing. And can you tell us a bit more about the team behind the list,
so some of the people that you're working with to build this platform?
May:
Uh, sure. We have a bunch of co-founders. Actually majority of the
co-founders came from traditional finance industry, including me and
Jake, which is our head of product and capital markets. He used to be a
option trader, in a few major investment banks in New York as well.
Prior to that, Jake spent years modeling interactive products as quant
researcher. So he pretty much oversee the product and capital markets
for Volare and we also have Alex who's a senior lead. He's a former
director in Berkeley. And then he also has like more than 10 years of
experience in developing pricing models for finance derivatives in fixed
income equity and community products and so on.
And
we also have like Kimbo, he's our head of risk, he used to work in
major banks as well. He's responsible. He's to be responsible for
managing the market risk. And then we also have like Heidi, which is our
market strategy, she's working in Apple and we have Astro as our head
of tech blockchain architecture. He's pretty like an expert in the DeFi.
He's a technical issue assist and we also have a bunch of other people
like.
We have right now about 18 people for the whole team, yeah.
Q3:
Well, it sounds like you have a very experienced team. It's quite
impressive. Thank you. When Volare actually gets started. So what's the
behind the actual idea of the platform?
May: So
I think first of all, like what we see in the industry is, I mean in
traditional finance, we see option trading usually takes up to 50% of
the total derivative markets. While in crypto, the option markets quite
not completely established yet and especially major option products
focused on centralized solutions and then VolareFinance is trying to
provide a decentralized solution and then pretty much. The first step
will be offering a trading platform for people that will be able to let
people trade some basic strategies. For example, you buy and sell a
couple option, it could be a standardized European or customized
European options, American options. But later on top of those like basic
products, we would like to provide some combo strategy to make it
easier for either institutional or. Sorry, retail users to trade against
the market and while we also tend to provide some index for
cryptocurrencies. Structured products is also like on the pipeline, uh
as well, because structured products can be pretty much like customized
depending on people's preference and demand, right. And then we try to
offer some portfolio management training, structuring, some algorithm
training tools, some maybe analytics tools on top of that. But I think
the goal is not to build up everything based on our own team. We try to
build up the whole structure and we try to open the ecosystem. To our
users, so that together the whole Community will be able to explore more
about the future development of all this option related products.
Q4:
With the current market conditions and all that’s happening with
liquidations and the bear market that we're in, how do you think market
conditions impact on options trading?
May:
Option traders are like the volatility of the market because the more
volatile the market is, the more, I would say the spread or the margin
like the option trader will be looking for, right. And then it will
definitely bring in more revenue. Think like a bear we don't really care
about, but there's a bearish or bullish market we care about whether
there’s enough volatility. Yeah.
Q5:
It's literally investors can capitalize whatever the market conditions
are and that's probably why there is such an increase in interest in
options trading 2. Sorry there for some of the people that are new two
options and might not be so familiar with it. Why might people want to
get involved with it?
May: I
think the first concern would be like how people will be able to trade
during the bearish market, right? As I just mentioned like it's probably
be a problem for people who do arbitrage in the bearish market because
the direction is like a uncertain and but for option products, it’s
actually like we're trading against the market, meaning like we’ll be
able to offer the hedging strategy for people. So we don't like be, we
won't be able to like uh, fear the bear market. Demand from the user's
perspective and I think with besides that the portfolio management
solution is also something so far as what I see that people are looking
for because not many of the users right now even they are institutional
like investors, they are not like professional option traders pretty
much I think they need such kind of portfolio management strategies to
help them when like hash against the market to help them manage their
own portfolio against the market again, right. And then three, help them
like making some decisions or help them maybe try to read the market
based on the like numbers. Yeah, I think those will be the major demand.
Q6:
Right. So if investors wanted to manage their own options trading, they
could do that. But if they wanted the support, and this applies to
institutions as well, they can get portfolio management as well.
May: Volare is currently in touch with a few major investors and they all want us to help them, like, working on that part.
Q7: Great. So what were some of the main benefits of Volare Finance over other option providers?
May:
I think like currently, I mean during the last cycle we see a few
options products, DeFi-related products coming to market for example
hygienically option. Volare finance try to develop a more transparent
and trustless decentralized protocol. We try to mimic the functionality
of centralized exchange. But I also compared with the decentralized
ones, we also try to like work on the liquidity pool and arrow Argo
market making to make sure that anyone wishes to provide liquidity
interest to Volare Community and then we also try to make sure the
capacity of liquidity pool is governed by the Community and it makes the
profit from the bite out for spreading the automated market making
process. Besides that we also have a feel like special design like based
on the technology behind the layer. For example, we have localization
rates, we have limited order book sale will be we also have. Trading
options through uh NFTS, which we are testing right now and pricing
model arbitrium and some volatility surface. Those are the major, you
know I would say solutions we're trying to bring to the market.
Q8: Could you expand on the NFT trading element? that sounds really interesting.
May:
Originally speaking, I mean Volare started actually end of 2020. We
feel like going through different kind of like back and forth on this
NFT topic internally and our team are just originally decided really
like we try to offer some options which Options can be treated out in
open sea or similar markets we are this stand right and because the RCA
it cancelled the original option into multiple smaller notional options
with the same option parameters and we think it would be able to help
lower the training requirements and boost liquidity. But like for now,
like we are not trying to offer the other option products as an NFT.
What we are testing right now is actually we're trying to test you like
some binary option as a team that will be able to start from something
easy, that we'll be able to grab some feedback from the users and then
we try to see whether the solution is good enough or not. Yeah.
Q9:
It's great that you're involved in the community. Amazing. So what are
you ultimately trying to achieve and how do you plan to reach that end
goal?
May:
Uh, well, as I see like I think eventually like the community of their
to be able to get heavily involved in our ecosystem development, right.
We tried to let the committee members have the direct development access
to our products, including our training tools, volatility analytics and
even like trillion portfolio management solutions and we try to let
people participate in the decision about the whole treating. Systems and
then we try to let people get involved as a liquidity provider for
sure, right. And then I think that's one of the eventual goal of Volare
finance. And based on that we are trying to provide a, I would say
option trading desk. On top of that, we try to provide some strategies,
some useful tools, some strategies even or maybe. Like some solutions
which could be developed by our communities that will be act as either
your asset management supporter, something like that, yeah.
Q10:
Amazing. It sounds like you’ve got a lot on that road map that you're
getting now. We know you've got some a lot of partners. Already
invested? Including DCG, we've got Spark Capital, we've got Blizzard
fund. Can you talk more about some of these names that are going to be
helped taking the Volare Finance further and why was Volare an
interesting opportunity for them to get involved in?
May:
For a lot of our investors because they are looking for some like
candidates like someone who can provide some option products, right, or
advanced option products. And in a decentralized way in the market, many
failed to find options previously. So when they met where they feel
like OK, good chance to you know get a slot and be involved in such kind
of products, that's one of the major reasons they want to make sure
that they cover such topic or focus, right. And for some of the
investors specifically we see they want someone to help them out this on
their own portfolio management or strategy part because we are
currently in talks with a few investors to provide them support like
that. But like we are, we've been talking with a few investors in such
way for a while, but we haven't really like I would say heavily or
officially start, yeah, because we feel like we want to be more mature
to really provide uh official solution. And then besides that investors
like Blizzard Fund which is on behalf of launch. Those are more about
the ecosystem part and based on the conversation with them, I think the
expectation is they want to make sure that their ecosystem product is
you know good enough to let people treat against the market. So I think
that's one of the major reason we were invested back then and I, yeah, I
think that that would be the major reasons.
Q11:
Can you talk a bit about your token and maybe what it can be used for
and why people might want to take part in the race alongside some of the
big names that we've just mentioned?
May:
I think one of the major reason that we want to welcome, you know
people from communities that we would like to onboard people who could
provide support either from marketing side or from the product side. So
we are pretty much like we want to make sure that the investor coverage
is broad enough. And then besides that, I think one of the major
expectation is from the tokens perspective is like definitely like has a
token recipe. Looking for financial return, right. And then as a token
utility for Volare ecosystem, we've been like carefully designed the
whole ecosystem try to make sure that there are buying pressure both
which will be like a big enough to let people have incentive to buy in
the layer token, right. And then by the buying pressure we are looking
for get involved with the stickers liquidity providers besides all those
general products. We are also looking to onboard our special token swap
program that for our Volare ecosystem product, we try to make sure that
Volare Token is definitely taking a share of those ecosystem products,
which means as long as the ecosystem is growing for their token will be
definitely like growing. Yeah, something like that.
Q12:
It is great. So the people that are interested in investing in this
private raise for VolareFinance, you can find the information on the
uplift website which is if you just tap the link in our bio, you can
find all links to the website and the community as well. And so just in
terms of new innovations, So what can people expect in the future from
you? what does your road map look like?
May: Sure.
So speaking about the road map, we so far we have already completed the
project initiation for sure, right. For example, we found out this kind
of analysis and research was done like option volatility products and
we found like a development of the few types of exactly option trading
including margins, spread structure, production insurance based on
protocol, but like in the future as I mentioned, we tried to onboard
more trade option strategy portfolios to investors and then we try to
offer index families, community product integration. We also try to
offer financial analytics, tools development and some complex structured
products combining yield, farming, mining options etc.
Q13:
What do you think the future of crypto as a whole and trading looks
like? And how do you see Volare Finance fitting in with the wider
adoption of crypto?
May:
OK, good question. So first of all, I think I'm definitely like believe
that crypto market as a whole is going to is going to grow right like
and then we're expecting more, more people jumping in more, more money
jumping in the whole market cap is definitely growing. And then based on
such kind of assumption like uh for sure like we are looking for a more
mature market situation for the whole crypto currencies and then based
on that, so we are expecting option derivative products will take at
least 50% of the whole derivative markets in crypto. And if that is
true, but there is definitely having a huge hope to take market decent
share of the market. Out on top of that and um. Yeah, I think that's,
that’s that's the vision.
Q14:
You summarized it well. When you see where do you see glory finance
being in the next two years and what, ideally, would you have achieved
by then?
May:
I think in two years for sure where we hope we finish all those major
product development based on the current design and we are board quite a
few ecosystem products already. Make sure that the Volare protocol
itself is able to provide people enough solutions for some basic usage.
But like on top of that we are also trying to be a major team who
provide asset management, portfolio management strategies, solutions in
the industry and we may want to explore more opportunities in trading
market in cryptocurrency. And for sure the long term vision is we could
be one of the major players in general, but we definitely also have a
long way to go.
About Volare Finance
Volare
is a leading provider of option trading, who provides a transparent,
trustworthy, and convenient decentralized mechanism without
intermediaries on option trading which can imitate the serviceability of
centralized exchanges.
Volare's
DeFi protocol creates a perfect solution for trading options in crypto.
It provides a DeFi option protocol for European options, option combos
and exotic options. It also allows investors to invest in standard or
customized option strategies portfolios, and provides clients tools for
hedging, speculation and yield enhancement based on its infrastructure.
Find us at Testnet/Website/Telegram/Twitter/Discord